A Second Chance
by tangledconstellations
Summary: Slightly AU. The happenings during the summer after the 'Mudblood' incident. Reviews are appreciated!
1. One, Lily

**_Summer, 1974_**

"Sev, hold up!" Lily laughed, despite knowing her calls were in vain. Severus and she were racing to the top of a hill. If there was one thing he would never do, it was admit that she was faster than him. He cheated, he always cheated. Lily didn't mind, though. Her hair was blowing in the breeze and she had nothing else to worry about except the impending rain. Which, frankly, didn't bother her in the slightest. She enjoyed rain, loved the smell of it and the feeling of the droplets gently caressing her skin. She knew Severus did too.

Eventually, she reached the peak of the hill, laying down on the grass beside Severus, just like they had done when they were children. They spoke of trivial things, playground gossip and what they desired to do when they left Hogwarts. Severus wanted to teach, or explore the fields of alchemy. Lily sought to become an auror. The rain never came and they spoke till the skies around Cokeworth darkened.

I_f only things could be like that once more_.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Summer, 1975<em>**

Lily Evans lay in her bed, gazing into the dark July sky outside of her bedroom window and thinking of years gone past. Coming home from school was no longer a welcome reprieve. Petunia had grown colder, now even refusing Lily the taunts she had taken so much pleasure in handing out years before. And then there was Severus. Poor, forlorn Severus. Always the brunt of the jokes of James Potter and his stuck up little band of miscreants. Lily had tried. She wanted to help him, stand up for him. In return, he had called her a Mudblood. Severus Snape, her first magical friend, the person who had readily assured her that being Muggle-born made no difference in their society, had called her a _Mudblood_.

Her blood curdled at the mere thought of it. She hadn't spoken to him since that day, though she was going to have to, eventually. She did not wish to grant Petunia the pleasure of knowing that another thing in her life had gone wrong. Everything in Lily Evans' life was not perfect, but she could very well lead Petunia into thinking that.

It was with that same determination that Lily left the house the next morning, calling out to her father that she would be meeting Severus and would make sure to be back for lunch. She inched down the path to Spinner's End, not quite knowing what she was going to do. Spending the morning alone was out of the question- Petunia was notoriously good at spying , and Lily would never see the end of it if she was found alone when she had said she would be with Severus.

Taking a deep breath, Lily took hold of the door-knocker and rapped it against the wood.


	2. Two, Severus

The knock on the door was not out of the ordinary- Severus merely assumed it was the milkman announcing his delivery, and thought nothing of it. After a while, though, the knocking continued, followed by the loud clanging of the iron-forged doorbell outside the house. _That_ was uncalled for enough to make Severus cause the bottle of marmalade- its contents that he had been spreading on his toast- to topple over. He swore under his breath, trying to salvage what was left of the orange jam. It was not often that the Snape residence received bona fide visitors, and it had been so long since Severus had been required to answer the door to a doorbell that he barely remembered what the thing sounded like.

Getting up from his perch by the window, Severus walked to the door, anxious that the ringing would have awakened his father. An angry _muggle_ was the last thing he needed. That much would be guaranteed if Tobias Snape was, in any way, disturbed. By now, the clanging of the bell had gotten almost insistent. "Alright, alright, I'll be there in a second!" he called out.

Severus swung open the oak door, his eyes widened in equal parts of shock and disbelief at the face he saw looking up at him.

"Lily," he said, the pitch of his voice rising and making his statement sound more like a query.

The last time he had spoken to Lily Evans had been at the beginning of term. Their friendship had become increasingly strained since their fifth year. She had meant him no harm, surely, when she told James Potter and his filthy band of toerags to leave him alone. She had only desired to offer assistance. But of course, Severus had no need for her assistance. He had been foolish, _childish, _almost. Refusing to acknowledge that he was on equal grounds with a Muggle-born girl had cost him the most magical friendship of his childhood.

But, perhaps, all was not lost.

"Severus." Lily intoned, nodding at him. She was being surprisingly cordial.

Severus started on a sentence despite not quite knowing what he wanted to say. There were two conflicting voices in his head. One part of him wanted to seek her pardon, to express the remorse that he had felt for weeks after the incident when she had refused to have anything to do with him. The other part, in a twisted way, sought revenge. How dare she ignore him for _months_ and then talk to him again as if nothing had happened_?_ Unfortunately, before he had a chance to decide what exactly it was that he planned to tell her, Lily spoke.

"Can we talk somewhere else?" she asked. There was a certain coolness to her voice that Severus had never noticed there before. Lily seemed certain of herself, collected. There was no sign of the cautious, spirited child that had been there but a year ago. Severus couldn't help but smile to himself. He knew her too well to not be able to see through the facade.

"Of course," he said, carefully re-arranging his features to hide the grin. He stepped out of the house and turned the lock in the keyhole.

"Up the hill?" he asked.

Lily nodded, and the pair of them wordlessly began their ascent, Severus still holding the slice of toast, half-covered in marmalade, in his hand.


	3. Three, Lily

A/N: My love to everyone who took the time to read/review this! I apologise for taking ages to post this chapter.

Lily could see that Severus was not trying to make polite conversation, although that wasn't very surprising. For the larger part of their trek uphill, he had remained silent, eating the toast and discarding the crusts of the bread on the floor once he had finished, a habit he seemingly hadn't changed. They reached the top of the hill faster than Lily had expected, and she nodded to him to sit down with her on the grass. For a moment, it was like nothing had changed. Severus was still dressed in his clothes that never fit; those mismatched socks and that same raggedy shirt with the too-large sleeves that hung forlornly over his arms, the tips of which barely gracing his wrists. But of course, everything had changed.

There was silence for a few minutes, which Lily took upon herself to break.

"So, how have you been?" She asked, cautiously. It had struck Lily that he had been good enough to humour her by agreeing to come out with her, so she thought she would do her part and try to make their conversation, or lack thereof, less awkward than it already was. Her eyes, though, were not fixed on his face, but rather his left arm. Severus had turned seventeen in January; he was free to take the Dark Mark if he desired to.

"I've been alright," Severus replied, his tone unreadable. Lily had expected that. Besides that, he had obviously caught her staring, because his next sentence was obviously an attempt to be reassuring. "I haven't, Lily," he said, his eyes widening, although she could not tell if that was because of shock or disgust. "I swear I haven't."

She ignored his statement, but didn't shift her gaze, as though staring at his sleeve long enough would bore through the fabric so she could see whether he was telling the truth or just leading her on again. "I told Petunia I would be meeting you today," she said, matter-of-factly. "I don't want her to think that I'm a liar."

He couldn't fault her for that. Petunia had genuinely been her primary motivation for knocking on Severus's door to begin with, although there was a nagging part of her that wanted to let bygones be bygones and get her friend back, although she doubted that would ever happen. Lily was not one to hold a grudge, and she had only persisted in doing so because of her belief that Severus had clearly chosen where his loyalties lay. If he hadn't already taken the Dark Mark, though, there might still be a whisper of hope that Lily did not want to snuff out.

She pursed her lips, biting down on the bottom one gently, not quite knowing where their conversation was going. Severus never talked much, but she had always spoken enough to make up for the both of them. Now there was nothing to say, nothing in her life which she found public enough to divulge, or important enough to warrant talking about to a boy she had spent the last few months avoiding.

"Lily," he started, his tone changed, no longet stuck in that droning, passive monotone that it had been for the past half hour. It held more weight, felt more _real_. "Lily, I swear to you, I am sorry. I didn't mean a word of what I said. I was angry and confused and I don't know what came over me."

Lily softened at the apology this time, meeting his gaze. "I know you are," she said. "And I want to, Sev, I want so _badly_ to pretend that everything will be fine and go back to normal. But it isn't going to. It's never going to."


	4. Four, Severus

Severus closed the distance between himself and Lily slightly, although he took care to leave a small gap so that they weren't actually touching each other.

"But it can be," he said, detecting a small hint of desperation in his own statement. And oh, how desperately he wanted it to be.

Lily didn't look at all convinced. "Don't tell me you don't understand. You've gone beyond meddling with evil, Sev. You're in the middle of it. You think I don't know what you and Mulciber and Avery and god knows who else are doing in the castle at night?" she said, her voice rising in a steady crescendo. "You dare, for a minute, think that I don't know they're all going to join You-Know-Who and become Death Eaters, and that you are perfectly likely to follow behind in their God-damned shadows!"

She paused rather abruptly, plucking a blade of grass from the ground and shredding it between her fingers. Severus hoped that she had stopped because she knew she hit a nerve. He didn't take well to being practically shouted at, especially after he had gone out of his way to apologise to her. Apologies weren't easy to come by with the people he hung around with. It was a sign of weakness, and weakness was under no circumstances, tolerable.

Eventually, Lily continued, this time in a gentler voice than when she had spoke last. "That choice was yours to make. You chose it and with that you denied everything I am. Nothing is going to change that." She said. Severus sensed that she was trying to contain her displeasure, but the spite in her tone could not be concealed. That was almost exactly what she had told him that day itself. That one day Severus Snape had gone and ruined everything by calling his best friend- and the girl that he actually secretly fancied- a Mudblood.

"Please, you need to hear me out," Severus sighed, reaching out and putting both of his hands on either side of Lily's shoulders. He didn't want her to think he was a monster. For crying out loud, he hadn't even been a willing participant in the whole Death Eater stint! All Severus had wanted was to be normal. It wasn't his fault that being a regular member of the Slytherin house entailed sympathising with the pureblood cause.

"Get off," Lily said firmly, pushing at his hand; but Severus was not about to let go. He wanted her to understand, and was prepared to do whatever it took to get her to listen to him.

"I said to get off!" Lily intoned, her voice getting louder as she scrabbled at Severus' hand, prying at it and trying to loosen his grip on her. It was in that flurry of flesh and cloth that Severus' flimsy left sleeve got pushed up, and a hint of the black snake-and-skull tattoo was visible for the world to see. He anxiously pushed the sleeve down, praying that by some miracle, Lily hadn't seen anything.

"Liar," she hissed. "You foul _liar_."


End file.
